
!lrOTT MiT UNS!" 

FT MEADE 

iE BOCHE DELUSION 

D 515 by CASPAR WHITNEY 


Published by 

THE AMERICAN DEFENSE SOCIETY, INC. 

44 East 23rcl Street, NEW YORK 

PRICE, 25 c 


1 


3K%' -% *•<>• •■> ■'*•'% vf ' ■ - • ^9> * ■* ^•- ‘ 

v - " ' ■•; V'-^ -<v ’•> .'^ :^ - ‘ i, ; ■ 

, »...i*GS-"..£ :.’::®* v,' Ji.-95P?‘’* 




, '• . fcff ' i 

-JW i * ' I 





♦n. 




. I 




.M 


^t ; ' -y'-w 




1 .‘1^ %-^vi^‘lD 

'. ,.«■ vVvi'.ij. 

.•V -' ■ '>S'- ?'-! 

I • * • ’ 


i’.j '■:'.?'4'-'i --’'r' •>' 


^ h jlM?: i" . . - ■■■• ^74 

. : > • • • 'vIK. M 


^,1 -. 4 % * 

; f.; ' '>;^ ■^VW-' 



i • ;£HEHjar- 
-»wr: i;'.-'' 5 .. ?■ 


V*y<f |l 


' *f' ^ - *T ..■■#v^f h ■. -' . 


V-.. 








hk 


COTT MiT UNS! 


THE BOCHE DELUSION 



FOREWORD 

Many Americans fail to realize how vital 
to America is the issue of this German-made 
war because they lack first-hand credible evi- 
dence to convince them of the German faith 
in the German doctrine of might is right; of 
German belief in Germany’s destiny to domi- 
nate the world, including “the Americas”; of 
how Germans regard the barbarous conduct 
of their soldiers; of how they regard them- 
selves in connection with the atrocious things 
they have done. 

This little book of first-hand observation 
and testimony is submitted with the view to 
supply some such evidence. Its sponsor, Cas- 
par Whitney, was a member of the Commis- 
sion for Relief in Belgium from March, 1915, 
to June, 1916, during which period he served 
as a Delegate in Belgium, Chief Delegate in 
German-occupied Northern France, made a 
tour of Poland to report on food conditions, 
and three trips into Germany. 

Before the war he had traveled extensively 
where the German trader has trailed and fat- 
tened upon the pioneer work of the English- 
man — in South America, Mexico, the West 
Indies and the Far East. 

Mr. Whitney is qualified to speak, and to 
speak with authority. 



“COTT MiT UNS! 

THE BOCHE DELUSION 


BY 

CASPAR WHITNEY 


Published by 

THE AMERICAN DEFENSE SOCIETY. INC. 

44 East 23rd Street. NEW YORK 








Copyright, 1918, by 
The American Defense Society, Inc. 


MAY 31 1918 


r\ 


©CI.A497613 




“GOTT MIT UNS” 

THE BOCHE DELUSION 
By Caspar Whitney 
I 

W hat kind of men are these behind the 
bomb-dropping on schools and hos- 
pitals, the U-boat assassin of the sea, 
and the terrible tale of ruthlessness in Bel- 
gium and Serbia? The query comes to me 
all the time since my return from the war 
zone. 

Do the faces of the boche, their talk, reveal 
the mind for such savagery? Do they seem 
normal? 

On all subjects save Germany, the War and 
the Kaiser, — ^yes; on those they are insane — 
obsessed of the Kaiser dogma that “we are in- 
trusted here on earth with a doubly sacred 
mission ; not only to protect Kultur . . . but 
also to impart Kultur to the whole of hu- 
manity.” 

They believe in the Kaiser’s oft-vaunted 
partnership with Almighty God; absolutely 
in their destiny for world domination. “World 


2 


'^Gott Mit Uns" 


power or defeat; Germany wants no half-way 
result,” is the battle cry. 

And in this crusade any instrument, from 
schreckUchkeit (frightfulness) to wanton 
butchery, is legitimate ; any means to the Ger- 
man end justifiable. 

We were ever encountering one or another 
expression of this creed in our C.R.B. relief 
work. From high to low, officers thought no 
more of withholding information necessary to 
us, belonging to us, or of making misleading 
statements, or, on occasions, of straight lying, 
than of taking a glass of beer. It is so or- 
dained at Berlin. 

In the spring of 1916 — ^while I was in 
Brussels — von Bethmann-Hollweg made a 
declaration in the Reichstag to the effect that 
‘‘Belgian industry is approaching normal 
conditions”; and at the time he uttered the lie 
for neutral consumption, he knew, as did we 
all behind the German lines, that practically 
not an industrial wheel was turning in 
Belgium. 

They do what they do because it suits 
their purpose; nothing else matters. The 
standard they raise is material, not ethical ; in- 
terest, not principle. Toward any coveted 


The Boche Delusion 


3 


project, end, creature — they march straight, 
unmindful of rights, regardless of the price 
they pay, whether it be in lying, pillage, 
murder or self-sacrifice. Almost it seems as 
if the moral side of such conduct were unin- 
telligible to them; as if deception, lying, 
brutality were unknown as such. 

They are a hypnotized people; the delusion 
of divine appointment to regulate the world 
on German lines has destroyed their balance. 
World domination is the sole thought; Ger- 
many the chosen of Heaven, Kaiser Wilhelm 
its anointed apostle, and “the German people 
is always right; because it is the German peo- 
ple and numbers eighty-seven million souls.’’ 

"Gott Mit Uns." 

“I have the right to do what I have the 
power to do” — thus the German doctrine in 
the precise words of its scholarly exponent 
Herr M. Stirmer. 

Could a people be other than egotistic in 
peace and brutal in war under such a faith 
and the blasphemy of ^'Gotf Mit Uns'' 
stamped on the belt buckles of their butcher 
soldiers? 

Always you sense the instinctive brutality 
in their discussions, in their comment on war 


4 


'^Gott Mit Uns'' 


horrors, in the whitewashing of the bloody 
trail of their troops. 

None can be more suave to the verge of 
obsequience, or friendlier, or better humored 
so long as all goes well along their own way. 

But the Hun lurks under this placid to jolly 
exterior ready to spring to utmost cruelty — 
when he has power. When he hasn’t the 
upper hand, he is Uriah Heep personified — 
until he gets it. 

You are always aware of this dual nature. 

Their way of thinking, their way of doing, 
is not only the best way as they see it. it is 
*‘the right way.” 

'^Gott Mit Unsr 

‘Tf we don’t do it (crush England) this 
time, we will the next, or the next, or the 
next” — and the crash of the fist on the table, 
the snarl of the German voice, come so vividly 
to mind, I find myself in mere recollection 
again stiffening to the ordeal of the C.R.B. 
delegate who realizes for what purpose he is 
behind the German lines, and plays the game 
to the bitter limit. 


The Boche Delusion 


5 


II 

I T was the night of the day on which the 
advance news (three months in advance 
it proved) had been given out at the 
Great Headquarters of the taking of Fort 
Vaux; and all local Germany was celebrating. 

We had been talking, three officers and I, 
of Germany’s chances to win the war, and 
they were obviously, boisterously elated by this 
early favorable news from Verdun. 

^Toor France,” said they, ‘^on her last legs, 
bled white.” “She is brave, but she must be 
destroyed. We must kill as a German neces- 
sity. England cannot save her; France will 
never survive this war. We shall destroy her. 
When France is destroyed, we will make a 
separate peace with her — and then go after 
the *%erdamnt English.” 

“Aren’t you getting a little ahead in your 
count?” I asked. “France still has great 
strength and an indomitable, unbreakable 
spirit. Remember the Marne.” 

“The Marne, yes,” snapped the ranking 
officer of the three, “that was not Germany, 
that was von Kluck; von Kluck, the eseL Had 


6 


Gott Mit Uns'^ 


he swung to the West instead of to the East, 
we should have been in Paris. The French 
had not expected us to go through Belgium, 
but to attack Nancy and Verdun. We had 
surprised them by our point of attack; we had 
surprised and smothered them with the big 
guns we used in the field. We were winning, 
but for von Kluck. But for von Kluck, this 
war would have been a short war — ^would 
have been won within three months as we 
planned.” 

‘‘But,” said I, seeking to switch from a sub- 
ject that was stirring the blood of us all — and 
jumping forthwith out of the frying pan into 
the fire — “there is still England to reckon 
with. Even though you won on land, the 
English fleet could keep you bottled up ; mean- 
while she is developing a great army.” 

And that fired the Teuton blast! As the 
officer sprang to his feet and shouted out 
Germany’s determination to “crush Eng- 
land,” the others joined in the chorus. 

Then all three turned to the American- 
made ammunition question — a theme second 
in favor only to “perfidious” England. 

“America is fighting England’s battles for 
her. America is sending food and ammuni- 


The Boche Delusion 


7 


tion to our enemies. America is making un- 
fair demands of Germany. Germany will not 
give up the submarine; we shall bring Eng- 
land to her knees, starve her with it.” 

“Yes, and Germany is driving America into 
this war,” I blurted. ’Twas not politic, surely, 
but I had to say it. I had held my tongue 
long enough even for a C.R.B. delegate; and 
it is not wise to let a boche go too far — else 
he will walk over you in hobnail boots. 

“If America comes in,” I went on, deter- 
mined for once to tell the Hun my real name, 
“it will sound the death knell to German hope 
of victory, because America, with her great 
energy and her unlimited resources, once in — 
will stay to the finish.” 

“Achl America will never come into this 
war,” they agreed. “Your people are well 
satisfied with their war profits,” said one; 
“And your German population will not let 
you,” said another; “Your President is an 
ultra-pacifist, and the Ford Peace Ship speaks 
for your pacifists, which are great in number 
and favor us,” said the third. 

“And if you did come in,” they all but 
shrieked, “you couldn’t do anything in time 
to influence the decision of the war. You 


8 ''Gott Mit Uns" 

couldn’t save France, you couldn’t stop Ger- 
many.” 

That Ford Peace Ship — what humiliation 
it brought to the Americans behind the Ger- 
man lines! Wherever I went officers held it 
up as evidence of our contentment with ‘Var 
profits”; hailed it as America’s peace emis- 
sary. Vainly I named it child of the advertis- 
ing agent. Diligently they read the pacifist 
propaganda, the pacifist speeches and the 
news of pacifist meetings in America which 
about this time found their way into the Ger- 
man press. Thus in the way of fooling the 
German people, the pacifists in America did 
their job thoroughly — and may take to them- 
selves the tragic satisfaction of being in a 
measure responsible for the fast and loose 
game the Kaiser played with the Administra- 
tion. 

The Germans, to my certain knowledge, felt 
as secure in their belief that America could 
not be aroused to war — either by freedom’s 
call — or the Kaiser’s contempt — as they were 
confident in February, 1916, that their colos- 
sal force of men and guns was about to deal 
France a blow at Verdun which would put her 
out of the war before England was ready to 
give effective assistance. 


The Boche Delusion 


9 


III 

T he early successes of the Kaiser’s troops 
at Verdun, conduced to swagger and 
high-stepping behind the boche lines. 
Officers in their rejoicing proclaimed not only 
were they ^^going on to Paris,” but on to India, 
to Egypt, to Gibraltar! And I recall one long 
story — unwound as we motored from St. 
Quentin to Lille — of how Germany and Spain 
were approaching an entente which was to 
result in the ‘^capture of Gibraltar” by the 
Germans and its ^‘restoration” to Spain. 

On, even to “the Americas — perhaps,” was 
the professed jest that spoke more of hope de- 
ferred than of pretense,! felt, when our “hands 
off South America” attitude became the espe- 
cial point of boche rally; and while none went 
so far as the Kaiser in his “America had better 
look out after the war” threat to Ambassador 
Gerard — yet I heard enough at this and at 
other times to indicate the under-current of 
sentiment that America was to be “next” on 
the boche list. 

“America will pay for this war,” exclaimed 
a German officer on the Russian front, in a mo- 


lo ^^Gott Mit Uns** 

ment of frank irritation; merchants in Ger- 
many hinted at our liability; professional edu- 
cators, both in and out of Germany, alluded to 
it as an assured next phase in the international 
storm of “biological development.” It 
seemed their rooted conviction. 

Americans who fancy us outside the Kais- 
er’s dream, “secure in our isolation,” will do 
well to ponder the German faith. Within six 
months after a defeat of England and France, 
German warships and German troopships 
would be on their way to our ports, as Andre 
Cheradame so clearly expounds in his pro- 
phetic book. It is on the German cards. 

That is what victory of the Kaiser would 
mean to America. We are and we always 
have been within his Pan-Germanic world 
domination scheme. 

Twelve years ago, descending the Orinoco 
River from a first attempt to reach the little- 
known Indians at its head-waters, I fell in 
at San Fernando de Atabapo with a German 
merchant of wide and influential South Amer- 
ican trade connections. For several days we 
hiked together, and in the frankness which 
comes often to men sharing the stress of diffi- 
cult travel, he practically told me Germany 


The Boche Delusion ii 

expected some time to be to Venezuela “what 
England is to Egypt’’ ; and one day when we 
felt the extortionist hand of Castro, then Presi- 
dent of Venezuela, he declared that were it 
not for “you Americans with your ideals 
and your out-of-date Monroe Doctrine,” Ger- 
many would “put Castro and Venezuela 
where they belong.” 

At Port Alegre, in Rio Grande do Sul, one 
of Southern Brazil’s three “German States,” 
the teacher of a local school, with whom I 
spent an evening in 1906, declared, after a 
panegyric on the “Fatherland,” that the 
Kaiser was going to make an “Over-seas Ger- 
many of Southern Brazil.” And subsequent 
journeys through these States showed me the 
same feeling among other German immigrants 
and the distance the propaganda of Pan-Ger- 
manism had traveled. 

From Valdivia to Valparaiso in Chili, Ger- 
man millers and German brewers spoke confi- 
dently of the day when the Kaiser would see 
that “the Germans came into their own.” 

An elephant catcher from Hamburg told 
me in 1897 in the jungles of Lower Siam that 
“the day was coming” when Germans would 


12 


Gott Mit Uns'^ 


not need to ask ‘^permits of England or France 
or Siam” for a free hunting hand. 

During seven months of travel in distracted 
Mexico, in 19 14- 15, I came often upon evi- 
dence of the German underground method 
and its influence upon industrial problems. 

When we went to the rescue of Cuba in 
1898, the German Minister in the Spanish 
Foreign Office in Madrid asked the English 
minister ^Vhat His Majesty’s Government 
would do if Germany should send a fleet to 
Panama.” “Follow it with one twice as big” 
(or words to that effect) promptly replied the 
Englishman. 

And when Admiral Dewey had his vexa- 
tious and near-war experience with the Ger- 
man admiral in Manila Bay, it was an English 
Commander who put his flagship, cleared for 
action, alongside Dewey — again to show Ger- 
many and the U. S. where England stood with 
America. 

Not only in the German navy was ^'der tag*' 
the toast, nor France and England alone in- 
volved in its fortunes. 

“America’s day is coming,” said one of the 
broadest-minded and least boche-like of the 
officers I used to see. “The world won’t 


The Boche Delusion 


13 


stand for your Monroe Doctrine or your fail- 
ure under it in Mexico to protect German, 
French, Spanish, English interests against the 
Carranza robbers.” 


H 


Gott Mit Uns** 


IV 

W HILE other nations dreamed peace 
and planned peace, Germany taught 
her youth that “war is a biological 
necessity” and set up through a world-wide 
propaganda the doctrine of “the will to 
power,” the right of war, the supremacy of 
the German people — and the prescience of 
their Kaiser. 

Maximilian Harden said in the “Zukunft,” 
July 29, 191 1 : “All Morocco in the hands of 
Germany; German cannon on the routes to 
Egypt and India ; German troops on the Al- 
gerian frontier — this would be a goal 
worthy of great sacrifice!” 

I have a map three by four feet bearing the 
title, ^*von der Nordsee zum Persischen Golf' 
(from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf), 
published in Berlin January, 1916, and bought 
by me in that city in February of the same 
year on returning from Poland. It reveals 
clearly the German Mitteleuropa phantasy by 
its heavy black line marking the route of the 
“Berlin to Bagdad Express” — from the mouth 
of the Elbe through Berlin, Dresden, Buda- 


The Boche Delusion 


15 

pest, Belgrade, Constantinople, across to Is- 
mid, through Asia Minor; thence to the Gulf 
of Iskanderum at the extreme eastern end of 
the Mediterranean ; thence in branching lines, 
reaching to Damascus and Bagdad to the Per- 
sian Gulf! 

Often among the Germans in argument I 
heard the substance of Bernhardi’s words — 
“Might is the supreme right, and the dispute 
as to what is right is decided by the arbitra- 
ment of war”; or Treitschke’s, — “when the 
State’s salvation is at stake there must be no 
inquiry into the purity of the means em- 
ployed.” Wherever I went I found the influ- 
ence of this doctrine, and the concurrence of 
the people in the Kaiser’s “Onward with 
God” attitude! 

“The German soul is God’s soul,” declared 
Pastor W. Lehmann from his pulpit in Ger- 
many. And all along the boche line ran the 
refrain of another pastor, “We must coerce 
. . . the inferior peoples.” 

To those who do not know the Germans in 
wartime — who have not lived among them 
since August, 1914 — this reads strangely, I am 
sure. One can scarcely believe that such 
thoughts are harbored ; such things said. One 


i6 ^^Gott Mit JJns” 

stares at them in their printed form — they 
look so incredible; but, believe me, they are 
more amazing when you hear them voiced 
seriously, repeatedly, loudly. I used to won- 
der if my brain, sickened, was whirling 
through some Teuton phantasmagoria. 

In memory I see my officer pacing his room, 
raising his voice at every stride. I hear him 
demand, “Why do you Americans give sym- 
pathy to the Belgians? We would not have 
harmed them had they let us pass through. 
We offered to pay them to let us pass, but the 
stupid swine refused. How dared they oppose 
the SOLDIERS of the KAISER.” 

^'Gott Mit Uns/' 

There is a recent book, for which William 
Archer is responsible — “Gems of German 
Thought” — that ought to be read aloud in 
every household where lingers any feeling that 
all the Huns and all the war lust are confined 
to the Kaiser and the “militaristic group” sur- 
rounding him. 

We know about German arrogance and 
German deception and German atrocity — Ar- 
thur Gleason has given us an unanswerable 
book full of their sorry vanity and fiendish 
ruthlessness; Hugh Gibson has proved that 


The Boche Delusion 


17 


they denied Edith CavelFs condemnation over 
an hour after the sentence of death had been 
passed on her; and some of us have felt and 
seen and studied the boche at first hand. But 
Archer supplies us with the mad German im- 
pulse behind the foul German deed. 

Read — by the fateful light of Belgium, Po- 
land, Serbia — Pastor Lehmann to his congre- 
gation: “Germany is the center of God’s 
plans for the world. . . . God and Germany 
belong to one another; . . . the German’s 
soul, it shall and will rule over mankind.” 

Or — as the rising vision of Dinant, Aerschot, 
Tintigny, Andenne, Vise, Herve, Ethe, Lou- 
vain, Termonde, Tamines, Soumagne dis- 
closes innocent, suppliant women with their 
children, and defenseless, panicky boys shot 
and bayoneted and burned to death in cold 
blood — hear Prof. G. Roethe: “We see 
everywhere how our soldiers respect the 
sacred defenselessness of woman and child.” 
Or read the professors of Germany, whose 
signed statement declares : “Our belief is that 
the salvation of the whole Kultur of Europe 
depends upon the victory that German mili- 
tarism is about to achieve.” 

Or one of Germany’s distinguished educat- 


i8 


''Gott Mit Uns'' 


ors: “To us more than to any other nation is 
entrusted the true structure of human exis- 
tence.” 

Hard to believe, isn’t it? Yet that’s the 
way they feel ; and precisely the way they talk. 
There is no affectation in these utterances; 
they stand for accepted and unswerving con- 
viction and whoso doubts shows inferiority 
in dire need of discipline and kulture — Ger- 
man style. 

It was often the plaint of my officer-keeper 
in Northern France that he could not under- 
stand why the brutally outraged Belgians 
scorned their overtures, now when the Great 
Headquarters was trying to make friends with 
them — by a policy of benevolent tyranny. He 
could not see why the Belgians didn’t grasp 
eagerly the proffered German hand besmeared 
with the blood of their people and grimed 
with the pillage and destruction of their 
homes. He told me so himself; otherwise I 
couldn’t have believed it. 

By all means read the “Gems”; they make 
the most illuminating first aid to understand- 
ing the German mentality that I know. 

What German intellectuals have written and 
preached, German history and the Kaiser’s 


The Boche Delusion 19 

troops in the field since August, 1914, corrob- 
orate. 

Bismarck told Germany they could “make 
war pay larger dividends than business” — and 
war and the ceaseless preparation for it be- 
came forthwith a national industry. Realiz- 
ing coal and iron, of which she had little, to 
be, through ships and guns and plate, prime 
factors in her proposed adventure and the 
essence of manufacturing life, of which she 
had almost none — Germany set out to obtain 
the required materials on the approved Bis- 
marckian plan. 

In 1864 she stole Schleswig-Holstein from 
little Denmark; seized a coking coal province 
from distracted Austria two years later; and 
in 1870 despoiled France of Alsace-Lorraine, 
containing the then biggest iron deposits in 
Europe. 

In 1 91 1 the world heard of the discovery of 
immense deposits of iron in Morocco — and 
within a month German warships anchored 
off the coast. Later a few years came another 
notable discovery of iron in the extensive basin 
of the Brie in northeastern France crossing 
into Belgium; and in 1914, when the Hun 
hosts poured over the Belgian frontier, they 


20 ''Gott Mit Uns^^ 

headed straight for Liege and the Verdun 
supported Brie. 

^^Onward with God . . . the innocent must 
suffer with the guilty,” proclaims the Kaiser. 
Such is the German slogan; and the German 
practice in Belgium and Northern France. 
Gott Mit {Ii)Unsl 


The Boche Delusion 


21 


V 

R eviewing the experiences of a year 
behind the German lines, in Belgium, 
Northern France, Poland and not tak- 
ing into account boche atrocities, of which no 
list is long or black enough — three impressions 
stand clear above all else : — 

I. The courageous spirit of the French and 
the Belgians. 

2. The stupid course of the Germans. 

3. The unreliability of the German Mili- 
tary’s word. 

At the end of one characteristically exasper- 
ating session in Brussels, Herbert Hoover 
once exclaimed : — ‘When I deal with an Eng- 
lishman I know where I stand and where he 
stands. I can believe what he says because he 
means what he says to the full with no mental 
reservations. But when I deal with these Ger- 
mans — I don’t know where I am.” 

That was the C.R.B. delegate’s handicap. 
He never could be sure of a definite conclusion 
on a given proposition. He never could leave 
a conference feeling a final settlement had 
been secured. Always — nearly always — the 


22 


'Gott Mit Uns^ 


Military held something back with which to 
trip or bring him again for further “talk.” 
He never knew if the end of pettifogging had 
been reached, or whether once more he was to 
be held up by the flimsy familiar story that 
someone had not “understood” or was “obsti- 
nate” or had to be “carefully handled” — 
while he marked time. 

“It is finished; it will be done” — ^was the 
stereotyped valedictory with which the Mili- 
tary usually closed our conferences ; and if he 
were fresh on the job the delegate went away 
feeling something had been accomplished — 
only quite soon to run up against some fresh 
authority or handicap or red tape or newly 
discovered “difficulty” or revised decision or 
new officer or new orders, or other trifling 
contention that brought him again to a stand- 
still before the smooth and evasive Grosses 
Hauptquartier, 

So the delegate waits, while his supplies are 
likely enough held up, or the psychological 
moment for his mission passed — until the 
“obstinate” officer is “persuaded”; until the 
Germans attain the end which they have had 
in view from the beginning. 

Then his way is cleared with a flourish of 


The Boche Delusion 


23 


trumpets. Every one now is so ready to help ! 
nothing is concealed ; the administrative cuffs, 
so to say, are rolled back for inspection; 
the officer assures the delegate of the high 
esteem in which he is held and, incidentally, 
intimates he is the one best bet of the C.R.B. 
— the most dependable go-getter of delegate 
privilege indeed that ever came across the 
Rhine. 

Alas for the credulity of hope and a worthy 
purpose! Opportunity has flown while the 
boche mouthed his sham concern; the poor 
soul whose parole you sought that she might 
return to her sick children, whence she had 
been dragged to the Kommandantur for no 
known reason, finds the youngest in death ; or 
the old man you wished to reach with nourish- 
ing food has passed beyond its need; or the 
privilege of visit for the anguished mother to 
the fever-stricken daughter on the other side 
of the German lines in France — comes too 
late. 

I cannot better illustrate the boche method 
than by the story of the return to the North 
of France people of a portion of their wheat 
crop which had been confiscated by the Ger- 
mans. 


24 


^^Gott Mit Uns" 


When the German wants anything in 
Northern France, he ‘^requisitions” it, at his 
own value — always greatly less than the real 
worth — and pays, when a pretense to pay is 
made — in bons de ville (French war money) 
or in quartermaster’s notes — ^which are the 
German army’s promise to pay after the war. 
Thus, the Kommandant gets a horse or a cow 
or the goods of a shop at his own price for 
a piece of paper which the sorely needful 
Frenchman can cash neither with the Germans 
nor his own people. He has no recourse what- 
ever. If the horse or the cow helped to a liv- 
ing, or the business represented his all, it’s the 
same to the German. Northern France is full 
of such victims — full of closed shops put out 
of business, of factories shut because the ma- 
chinery has been sent to Germany. 

The boche idea is that France will really 
pay these quartermaster notes through the in- 
demnity Germany expects to exact when the 
war is won; such was the frank explanation 
to me when I asked why they didn’t give these 
shut-in folk struggling for existence, either 
money or supplies they could use. 

It was a coarse, brutal “joke,” practiced by 
the especially defective among these morally- 


The Boche Delusion 


25 

loose-jointed Huns upon those not reading 
German, for an officer to give a quarter- 
master order for any fool thing that might 
occur to him at the moment. I heard often 
of the “joke” — the officers used to laugh about 
it — and once I saw the miserable evidence — a 
pass to the “Kaiserhof” in Berlin, given an 
elderly woman in “pay” for her only cow. 

^^Gott Mit Uns/* 

As the time approached for the delivery of 
the German made flour from this confiscated 
wheat, I, as representing the C.R.B. (to 
whose long urging for such restoration the 
Germans had finally yielded), took up with 
Great Headquarters the question of payment 
by the people for the 100 grams per capita per 
diem which the Germans had agreed to 
return. 

The officer speaking for Headquarters told 
me unequivocally in English, that “every one 
shall receive the flour whether he can pay for 
it or not,” that the general question of “pay- 
ment in such cases” would be “arranged with 
the Committee (French) of the district in 
which they live,” and that ^'bons de ville will 
certainly be accepted.” 

Soon after, however, I learned that local of- 


26 


^'Gott Mit Uns" 


ficers in some districts, despite the protest of 
the C.R.B. delegate, were exacting real 
money, marks and francs, before they would 
deliver the flour. And, although the Head- 
quarters officer was in Berlin easily within 
telephone call — in daily communication in 
fact with Headquarters — and though I urged 
that the matter be laid before him (no Amer- 
ican was permitted actually to use the tele- 
phone) , I could only get a message that he was 
‘‘indignant’’ at the “misunderstanding” by the 
officers of the “orders” he had given and 
would “take the matter up” when he returned. 
Meanwhile the officers went on collecting the 
money from the people, who were either 
obliged to accede or go without the flour. 

I could get no machinery into action to stop 
the hold-up. I could only advise not to pay 
money — but when women and children are 
wanting bread their men do not wait on dis- 
cussion if they can in any way secure the 
needed food. 

When the Headquarters officer returned 
two weeks later, there was a noisy show of 
“madness” at the “disregard” of his “in- 
structions”! But the begleit offizier had com- 
pleted his job. It had been a deliberate 


The Boche Delusion 27 

scheme to get the people’s money; I so told 
my local officer — and he laughed. 

The incident of my experience with a Kom- 
mandant in the Province of Luxembourg, 
Belgium, who took advantage of my inability 
to read German and so executed a paper con- 
trary to agreement, sheds also its light on Ger- 
man trustworthiness. 

We were on our C.R.B. tour of inspection, 
passing through the little town of Marche, 
when the chauffeur of an approaching Ger- 
man military car containing several officers 
suddenly cut directly across our front, against 
the rule of all roads and common sense, in an 
attempt to turn into a side street. Our Bel- 
gian chauffeur was quick-witted enough to 
make a right spin and so avoid collision — but 
the boche chauffeur lost his head, and plunged 
into the house on the opposite corner, fully ten 
feet separating our cars when they came to a 
halt. 

We were arrested and for four hours held 
guarded by soldiers in the street before the 
Kommandant would admit us to his pres- 
ence. Then he harangued us in a room full of 
soldiers and others, at top of his rasping voice, 
on our ignorance of German; ^^this is Deutsch- 


28 


''Gott Mit Uns" 


land and you must speak to me in German,” 
he howled — quite the performance to expect 
from a coarse creature come suddenly to un- 
accustomed authority. 

Finally he offered to release us if we would 
deposit 300 marks as guarantee for our ap- 
pearance when the case came to trial. We 
agreed to this on the understanding (the 
Kommandant spoke excellent English and 
consented to communicate in that hated tongue 
after he had blown off) that the receipt should 
explicitly acknowledge the money as such 
guarantee and in no sense as a fine. The Ger- 
man assented, promising a paper executed 
accordingly. 

When the document was taken to Brussels 
several days later for translation, it read : ‘^300 
marks in part payment for damages caused to 
a Government automobile I” And we never 
got the money back, either from the local 
Kommandantur or from the Government at 
Brussels, to whom the matter was fully ex- 
plained! 

The average German officer’s mind is an 
open and not fastidious one on the subject of 
loot. Pillage has received the stamp of roy- 
alty; to loot abundantly is to loot regally: 


The Boche Delusion 


29 


His Royal Highness Prince Eitel Fritz, 
son of the Kaiser, after spending a week in a 
Liege chateau with the Duke of Brunswick 
and Baron von Mirbach, packed up and car- 
ried off all the dresses of the ladies of the 
house. 

The Duke of Gronan and staff on leaving a 
chateau at Villers-Notre Dame, where they 
had been quartered, depleted the house of all 
the silver, jewelry, wines, art objects — and 
baby clothes ! 

At Durbuy, the commanding officer and his 
aides — having been received as gentlemen in 
a gentleman’s chateau, where often I had the 
pleasure of lunching — demanded the keys to 
the wine cellar on leaving and loaded an auto- 
mobile to its limit. 

At Vielsalm, a brave old lady in her house, 
empty of its protecting loved ones, implored, 
without avail, a departing officer who had 
snatched her late husband’s riding crop from 
the wall, to leave what to her was a treasured 
memento and of no intrinsic value to him. 

In a Charleroi house where the trunks of 
the family had been emptied by two boche 
officers billeted upon them — a letter after- 
wards found from the wife in Germany told 


t 


30 


Gott Mit Uns*^ 


of the use to which the loot had been put, and 
asked if the officer could not get “from some 
Belgian house” a ‘‘picture to cover” a certain 
wall space she described in one of the rooms of 
their Frankfort home. 

“He who does not believe in the Divine 
Mission of Germany,” Pastor K. Konig has 
declared to the people from his pulpit — “had 
better hang himself.” 


The Boche Delusion 


31 


VI 

S OME of the German officers attached to 
the delegates in Northern France had 
been in business in London, and the ques- 
tion of whether they would be able to resume 
at the close of the war was a fruitful one for 
evening discussion. 

Did I think they could do business again in 
England — the banker, the merchant, the 
steamship agent? Did I think Americans 
would travel again on the Hamburg and 
North German Lloyd boats? And if I 
doubted its likelihood as I did, “because of 
Belgium,” as I said — arraignment of “de- 
ceitful England,” the Slav peril, the Amer- 
ican-made ammunition, followed, with defiant 
assertion that “Germany needs no apologists.” 

But some of this kind did care for the opin- 
ion of the world. They never lost an oppor- 
tunity when the names of their great masters 
in music and art came into the conversation — 
to exclaim — “but England calls us barbar- 
ians.” They were ever digging up the decent 
act of some German or other and rolling it 


32 


Go// Mit Uns'' 


into view with sneering references to “Eng- 
land’s charge of barbarism.” 

I recollect an officer calling me one day to 
the window to see his orderly distributing 
sweets he had bought for the children swarm- 
ing before our house. I regret to say I 
couldn’t help feeling the scene had been set to 
impress me. I hoped I was wrong; but two 
days later at St. Quentin I saw them compel 
the Frenchmen to ring all the church bells for 
an hour in celebration of the fall of Warsaw! 
Unquestionably they felt the slur of the bar- 
barian taunt, but not so much as they resented 
Great Britain putting against them Indian 
troops, to whom they always bitterly referred 
as “colored Englishmen.” 

An amusing and incongruous incident in 
this English-hating atmosphere was the ap- 
pearance one night in our official little family 
of an officer in his English-made clothes just 
taken from a long-lost trunk. No boy with 
his first red top boots ever showed franker glee 
than this German in his British tailored suit 
— as he strutted about challenging our admira- 
tion for its style and fit. 

So far as personal relations were concerned, 
:we delegates in general got on well enough 


The Boche Delusion 


33 


with our officers — some of us, with a sense of 
humor and a full appreciation of our mission 
behind the lines, a little more comfortably 
than others. I confess I often felt they had 
their troubles, too. Several were men of the 
world and quite human by comparison with 
their fellows in the active military work, and 
I have heard them roundly cursing the ^^stu- 
pid” always inflexible attitude we so frequent- 
ly met in our relief work. Yet the Hun was 
usually near the surface. 

One of the duties which fell oftenest to me, 
as Chief Delegate, was to calm waters ruffled 
by the very proper retort of some long-suffer- 
ing delegate to repeated and sometimes slur- 
ring flings at America, to which no dele- 
gate was either asked or expected to submit — 
the maintenance of his self-respect as man and 
American citizen being of paramount concern 
to his work and to the C.R.B. And it is illus- 
trative of the German sense of fair play that 
they never hesitated to fall in groups upon a 
solitary delegate with all their batteries of 
spiteful argument belching loudly ; or to take 
offense if the delegate, stung out of his “neu- 
tral” composure, sent a hot scoring return into 
the German camp. 


34 


"Gott Mit Uns" 


A delicious exhibit of German kultur was 
that of an officer arguing at dinner a question 
personal to a delegate and his mother, which 
the latter had discussed at length and frankly 
in a censored letter just received from her 
through that same officer! 

The most trying element in our association 
with the Germans, however, was the air of 
suspicion which constantly enveloped our life 
and movements. Having made an agreement 
to co-operate, they were ever hindering by a 
network of harassing obstacles; having ac- 
cepted us in residence, they surrounded our 
goings and comings with an ever-recurring 
volley of surmises that were impotent had 
we been disposed to ‘‘serve the enemy,” and 
only revealed their own failure to play the 
game. They treated us as spies and yet left 
open the door. It was stupid, blundering 
conduct. 

The world speaks of “German efficiency”; 
en masse, yes, as a machine — the filing system 
efficiency; lacking imagination, lacking initia- 
tive, other than that on the schedule. In my 
mind, based on my own experience and obser- 
vation and apart of course from sheer war 
making, systematic devastation and brutality 


The Boche Delusion 


3S 


in which the boche has displayed memorable 
thoroughness — ‘‘German efSciency” stands 
for over-organization — ^weak in its failure to 
grasp the human and fundamental essentials 
of living and doing — choked to insensibility 
by egoism and a shriveled vision. 


36 


"Gott Mit Uns" 


VII 

F or miles and miles the beautiful roads 
of Northern France are shorn of the 
lovely poplar trees that once lifted their 
shapely heads to grace and shade them. Now 
grinning, bare stumps stand in mute evidence 
of German destruction. 

Motoring through these silent, accusing ave- 
nues always served to bring the war close in 
all its ugliness. Never indeed was there any 
joy in the daily tours of duty, save of course 
that inspired by thought of the help we were 
giving the brave victims to last out to victory. 
The forlorn little villages without light, with- 
out diversion, with scarcely enough to eat, and 
German soldiers billeted upon most to the 
limit of their space — it made my heart heavy 
as we sped through the silent, desolate settle- 
ments ; and, when the officer yelled and shook 
his fist at the slow-moving carts which did not 
turn out quickly as we tore alongside the road 
— every living thing scurrying off our .path — 
how I hated the thought that these harried, 
weary souls might think me, too, a German as 
we flashed past them. 


The Boche Delusion 


37 


In Belgium we had our own car with its 
white flag bearing the red C.R.B. letters, 
known and hailed wherever we went. One of 
the pleasant memories indeed of a distressful 
year are the salutations we gave and received 
in the course of our daily rounds ; often from 
houses along the road where we never stopped 
some one waved as we passed. 

The wonderful buoyancy of these people 
amid the waste of their lives and the wreck of 
their homes! I never ceased to marvel at it, 
working among them in their villages or at 
the committee meetings. Always for them the 
star of hope hung steadfastly on high. 

One day a French ’plane dropped a spy in 
a certain district. I knew of it because it 
happened we were returning to quarters and 
saw the German troops busy in the search 
which proved fruitless; but quite in another 
section — 20 kilometres distant — the French- 
men, too, had heard, by the remarkable and 
mysterious methods of communication which 
continue despite all German effort — and the 
light of controlled joy on the faces I saw that 
day made my heart sing. 

What a contrast was presented! The Ger- 
man’s cock-sure, dull arrogance; the philo- 


"Gott Mit Uns" 


38 

sophical acceptance of the situation by the 
French, always alert, always looking forward I 
Persistently they clung to their own hearth, 
even when the house above them under fire 
was battered beyond repair. Often I failed to 
induce such a family to move back to safety 
and the ravitaillement zone. 

Without papers or letters, without tidings 
of their scattered families or luck of their 
fighting sons ; in want, in sickness and distress, 
waiting, always waiting with patient courage 
for the victory they are confident is coming — 
these Frenchmen and Belgians are an enigma 
and an irritant to the German. 


The Boche Delusion 


39 


VIII 

T he Frenchman fits himself to necessity 
— but the Belgian makes less compro- 
mise. His passive, unceasing resistance 
is a thorn in the German side. Constantly 
trying and as constantly failing to break their 
spirit, the boche goes to lengths ridiculously 
petty in his clumsy effort to play the game, in 
which the Belgian invariably outwits him. A 
volume could be, and I hope will be, made 
of the trial of wits between Teuton and Wal- 
loon — one or two illustrations here may suf- 
fice to suggest its character, and the spirit in 
which the Belgians carry on. 

A Belgian woman came to the Holland 
border en route to Rotterdam, carrying in her 
muff lining assuring letters to anxious relatives 
outside. If she should be caught with the 
letters, deportation to Germany if nothing 
worse would result. As her examination be- 
gan she showed patent concern over a small 
handbag on her arm, appearing to have much 
difficulty opening it and managing the muff 
at the same time. Suddenly thrusting the muff 
into the hands of the nearby soldier, she asked 


40 


'^Gott Mit Uns" 


him to hold it while she unfastened the bag. 
Then, her examination concluded satisfactor- 
ily — she received her muff from the soldier, 
thanked him and went over the border with 
her budget of good news ! 

There are many stories connected with the 
secret publication of that courageous paper 
Libre Belgique,” which continues to ap- 
pear despite the standing offer of 10,000 marks 
for any information regarding the identity of 
the editors, publishers, or its place of publica- 
tion. One of the most amusing is that of an 
anonymous note to the German authorities 
announcing its publication in a certain square, 
by a certain man. The German polizei took 
the hint seriously, found the square, and on a 
statue in its center read the name of the ^*pub- 
lisher” they sought. 

The regularity with which this irrepressible 
little journal is laid on the breakfast table of 
the German Governor gives keen satisfaction 
to Brussels as one compensation of life under 
boche regime. 

M. C., of a certain bank of Antwerp, put up 
a notice, at a period of America’s unpopular- 
ity with the Germans, that “Tomorrow, July 
4th, being the Independence Day of the 


The Boche Delusion 


4 ^ 


United States, this bank will be closed in 
honor of the day.” The Germans ordered 
him to take in the sign and keep the bank 
open. He took the notice in and put out an- 
other : ^^Tomorrow being the 4th of J uly, this 
bank will be closed.” And he kept it closed. 
The Germans fined him 5,000 francs. 

At Virton, a French aviator trying to de- 
stroy the railroad tracks narrowly missed 
killing a Sister of Mercy standing in her Con- 
vent yard. On a C.R.B. delegate remarking to 
a Belgian woman the next day that it was 
rather hard to be at the receiving end from 
both sides, she said, “If we are killed in this 
way, it is but our little contribution to Bel- 
gium. Our lives must not be considered if it is 
deemed necessary to destroy enemy material.” 

Accompanying his mother in a train, a little 
boy was kneeling on the seat looking out of the 
window. Other Belgians and two German of- 
ficers were in the car. Passing a cart filled 
with pigs going to market, the youngster ex- 
claimed : “Oh mamma, look at the pigs.” His 
mother, thinking he referred to German 
soldiers, tried to silence the youngster by tell- 
ing him he must not talk so. “But, mother,” 


42 


"Gott Mit Uns" 


in a loud, earnest voice, “you do not under- 
stand ; they are real pigs.” 

Mme, O in a street car full of German of- 
ficers, in a loud voice to her companion, re- 
marks: “Black dresses are smart this year.” 
“Yes,” replies her friend, “certainly gray 
(color of the German’s uniform) is not fash- 
ionable.” 

In May, 1916, the Allies moved the clock up 
an hour — calling it “summer time.” If the 
Belgians did the same, they would have the 
detested ^^heures Allemandes^^ they had so per- 
sistently fought against. A C.R.B. delegate 
had an appointment to meet a Belgian that 
May morning at 10 o’clock. He arrived and 
found the Belgian waiting. They compared 
watches. It was ten by the delegate’s and 
eleven by the Belgian’s. “But,” said the dele- 
gate, “I have the Belgian time and you have 
the German time.” ^^Mais non, Monsieur/^ 
said the Belgian, “I have the time of the 
Allies. Today my King advanced his watch; 
surely a loyal Belgian could not be late to meet 
his King when he marches into Brussels at the 
head of his army!” 

Even among the gamins of Brussels, there 
are innumerable instances of the same spirit. 


The Boche Delusion 


43 


In the Flemish slum section, they poked stove- 
pipes out of their Avindov^s to irritate the Ger- 
mans, who had just mounted cannon on the 
hill of the Palais de Justice; others followed 
the German band, stepping stiffly along the 
sidewalk with heads turned the other way; or 
parodied German commands and goose- 
stepped backwards at the order of Paris/' 
Then there are the stories of the boy, arrested 
by the German polizei for a trifling offense, 
who called to the rest of his companions, “Go 
tell mother I have been taken prisoner of 
war”; and the classic replies of Mme, la D. Z. 
to the German officer who thanked her for her 
hospitality, “You have not to thank me; I did 
not invite you”; and of Mme, X. to a German 
officer offering his seat, “Keep your place, sir; 
you will not remain there long.” 

But the question of wearing Belgian colors 
gave the Germans greatest exasperation and 
was the occasion of their most signal defeat. 
When the forbidding order went forth every- 
one appeared next day wearing an ivy leaf, 
symbol of endurance, and some women 
flaunted the colors of their flag in articles of 
their apparel. I have seen three women, one 
in a black, one in a yellow, and one in a red 


44 


^'Gott Mit Uns'' 


waist, walking abreast to thus present their 
flag’s colors in defiance of the German man- 
date and further addle the polizei brain. I 
have seen three women together each wearing 
one color of the flag in flowers fastened to 
their breasts. I have even seen the combina- 
tion worn by a single woman — in hat, waist or 
skirt trimming. 

The story is told of a man in Antwerp who 
fastened quite a long ribbon of colors under 
his coat lapel with only a bit peeping through 
the buttonhole. A German officer ordered 
him to cut it off. He did so — and then pulling 
a new bit into sight continued his promenade! 

July 2ist is the national anniversary, the 
Fete Nationale of Belgium, and before the 
war 2i Te Deum was celebrated in all the 
churches, but since it has been forbidden by 
the Germans, High Mass and the Belgian 
National Hymn replace it. 

I shall always remember one High Mass I 
heard in the beautiful gothic cathedral of 
Saint Gudule. The overflowing cathedral, 
the courageous priest in brilliant scarlet sur- 
rounded by burning candles, the emotion of 
the people, the significance of their brave 


The Boche Delusion 


45 

patriotism, the endurance of their abiding 
faith — thrilled me to the marrow! 

On another July 21st, by some kind of a 
secret pre-arrangement passed by word of 
mouth, the people filed through the Place des 
Martyrs, throwing flowers into the crypt con- 
taining the tombs of those who died in the 
War of Liberation from Holland until it 
overflowed. To all appearances they were out 
for their usual promenade and hence the Ger- 
mans were misled and unable to take measures 
to prevent the perfectly orderly celebration 
until it was practically concluded. 

And yet another. It is customary for the 
Belgians on Independence Day, as July 21st is 
called, to lay wreaths at the foot of a statue 
erected in honor of the soldiers that died for 
the independence of Belgium. Last year the 
Germans forbade this and posted soldiers to 
enforce the order; but all that day long the 
people walked the street above the monument, 
the men lifting their hats, the women bowing 
their heads, as they came in sight of the 
statue 1 

As a manifestation of patriotism in the face 
of their conquerors, could an episode be more 
spirited? 


46 


^'Gott Mit Uns'' 


When the Germans entered Brussels on 
August 20, 1914, all shops and houses were 
closed, as though every one had left the city. 
The anniversary of this memorable day is al- 
ways observed by the practical closing of the 
shops, through one subterfuge or another, not- 
withstanding German efforts to keep them 
open. In obedience to German order, the 
doors are unlocked — but in one shop is the 
sign ^‘cleaning day” ; in another, a bucket with 
water and a brush stand in the window ; while 
yet another window is filled with ivy wreaths. 
No Belgians enter the shops, and should a 
German do so the prices are raised tenfold. 

Outclassed in the combat of wits, the Ger- 
mans resort to indiscriminate and brutal petty 
tyranny that often results seriously for the 
victims. 

A mother in Brussels, without warning, was 
taken from her five children, three of whom 
at the time were ill with scarlet fever, and held 
at the Kommandantur for seventeen days, dur- 
ing which a merciful God and her friends 
kept the youngsters alive. She never knew 
and no one could ever learn why she was 
taken. 

One day soldiers appeared at a certain gen- 


The Boche Delusion 


47 


tleman’s residence in Namur with the an- 
nouncement that they had come to search his 
house for arms, a demand and practice quite 
common. Finding nothing after thorough 
ransacking, the soldiers were leaving when, 
on the back porch leading to the yard, one of 
them discovered a boy’s toy air gun, and asked 
why it had not been declared. The man 
laughed, thinking it a joke — but he was taken 
to the Kommandantur and fined one thousand 
francs ! Y es — actually ! 

A woman was granted permission by the 
Kommandant of her locality to visit a near 
town in the military zone. At her destination 
she was arrested, searched and sent back under 
guard. I met her on the road, a brave elderly 
lady, a soldier on the seat with her, another on 
the box, a third on the floor of the carriage. 
It wasn’t that they feared she would outwit 
them perhaps, but only another method of 
putting humiliation upon the Belgians. 

It was fine to see that gray-haired woman 
sitting erect and apart from the sprawling 
soldiers! She was made to pay a fine of lOO 
marks, as well as the cost of the transportation 
of the soldiers back to their post. 

A 1 2-year-old girl walking with her grand- 


''Gott Mit Uns'’ 


48 

mother on Rue Belliard (Brussels) cried out 
CO chon*' (pig) as a German officer brushed 
her in passing. The exclamation was heard 
by the orderly following the officer. The 
couple were followed to their home, received 
summons to appear before the Kommandant 
the following day, and by night the little girl 
and her grandmother were on their way to 
Germany, where they were confined for three 
months. 

The world has always suspected the Ger- 
mans unfitted to successful colonizing, and 
Belgium and Poland have proved it beyond 
question. Quite outside of atrocities and 
broken faith, their conduct in Belgium has 
been a marvel of ineptitude, a monument of 
stupidity. There is not here the space to re- 
count their blunders, — they would fill a vol- 
ume. It is to wonder ! 

In her noble book, “The Women of Bel- 
gium,” Charlotte Kellogg says the full story of 
the Belgian’s ordeal can never be told; and 
she is right — the fortitude you witness, the suf- 
fering you hear, grip the heart and silence 
the tongue. Speech seems so feeble, the pen 
so inadequate to the recital. Yet Mrs. Kellogg 
has given the breath of life to their tragic, 
valorous story. 


The Boche Delusion 


49 


IX 

W E have heard much of what the world 
has done for Belgium, but little 
enough of what the Belgians have 
done for themselves. The world is not giving 
them their food — as so many imagine — they 
are paying for it. They have insisted that they 
shall pay; and out of their own pockets they 
have given in charity fifty million dollars to 
their people. Of the three million destitute 
and homeless, half exist practically on the 
soup and bread line, and all depend on the 
remarkably complete and active system of 
bienfaisance of which the Belgian Comite 
Nationale is the inspiration and the financial 
support. 

’Twas the founders of this Comite — Messrs. 
Francqui, Solvay, de Wouters, Janssen — who 
sprang to the relief of their countrymen in 
those first shocking days, and have carried on 
since with the great help of the C.R.B. To 
the initiative and the constructive skill of 
these men the Comite Nationale, which 
made the helpful work of the C.R.B. possible 
and successful, owes its notable efficiency. 


"Gott Mit Uns" 


50 

They and this organization, with its forty 
thousand workers, were the background, the 
base on which the C.R.B. relied, and with- 
out which it could have accomplished little ; 
for the C.R.B. was the door in the German 
wall through which came supplies, but the 
Comite Nationale was the heart and the ar- 
teries of its distribution to the people. These 
Belgians and this Comite are entitled to and 
should always receive, at least, equal credit 
with the C.R.B. — which the unknowing 
have viewed as a single-handed miracle 
worker. 

The C.R.B. filled a needed place and filled 
it handsomely; all honor to the C.R.B. and 
its unselfish helpers! Their work was mag- 
nificent, but not more so, not as much so as 
that of these Belgians and their brilliantly 
efficient organization. All and imperishable 
honor to them, too 1 


The Boche Delusion 


51 


X 

T hat same confidence of German officers 
in German invincibility, in Germany's 
“world mission,’’ German Kultur — I 
found also to exist among the soldiers. 

On days when no duty took me motoring I 
used to walk into the hills around Charleville 
(Great Headquarters) to breathe the pure air 
of that lovely country free of boche influence ; 
— and thus I came to know the sentries and 
they me. It was my habit to engage them in 
conversation, and if by chance one spoke Eng- 
lish, as often he did, being of the older land- 
strum corps and many from America — I 
talked at length and freely in English instead 
of piecing out some sort of communication by 
the means of my very limited German. 

One middle-aged soldier, who sometimes 
was on duty at a bridge across the Meuse, had 
been visiting the “Fatherland” after nine years 
in America, he told me, when the war caught 
him. He asked if the war would soon be 
over; said he and his comrades were *^ganz 
fertig '' — plenty tired. 

There was another, on the road to Sedan, 


52 


'^Gott Mit Uns^ 


who generally kept guard under a railroad 
bridge, with whom I chatted oftenest in this 
region and to whom I took an occasional cigar. 
He came from Minneapolis and had been in 
America eleven years — when he, too, home for 
a visit, was swept into the German Army. 

Now here was this man, with eleven years 
in the freedom of the United States as a back- 
ground, yet who stoutly upheld what Ger- 
many was doing and the way she was doing it. 
Nor was it through pure loyalty, I felt. He 
spoke fluent English and expressed himself on 
every other subject quite as an intelligent man. 
He re-echoed the sentiment I so often heard 
among the officers — that Belgium was un- 
worthy the sympathy of America; that Ger- 
many had offered to pay for the privilege of 
passing through and would have done the Bel- 
gians or their country no harm had the permis- 
sion been granted and the passing unopposed. 

^^But,” said I, ^^do you not see that Belgium 
would have been false to her trust, would have 
failed in her duty to England and France and 
become an ally of Germany had she yielded to 
Germany’s desire?” 

‘‘Germany would have paid them,” was his 
reply to this and everything else I said along 


The Boche Delusion 


S3 


the same line. He, no more than the officers, 
could see or would see any other point of view. 
Germany wanted to go through — that was rea- 
son enough ; Germany would have paid them 
— that was all-sufficient. 

^^Gott Mit Uns." 

Perhaps you think this an extreme illustra- 
tion; yet in the year I spent behind German 
lines, wherever I found a soldier who could 
talk and would talk, it was the same story — in 
Belgium, in Northern France, in Germany, in 
Poland. 

As the Kaiser thinks, so think the German 
people. 

Once I asked a soldier if he believed in the 
kind of warfare they had made on Belgians. 
‘‘They are enemies of the Fatherland,” he 
answered. 

Another, to my query as to what he thought 
of shooting women and bayoneting babies, 
exclaimed : “English lies.” I told him I had 
talked at Durbuy with a twelve-year-old boy 
— all that was left of a family of five, mother 
and four children, three, five, twelve and six- 
teen years, respectively, shot down as they fled 
from their house by the passing German 
troops who had fired it. The little boy had 


''Gott Mit Uns" 


54 

lost his arm ; the mother and the three daugh- 
ters had been killed; the father was in the 
army. 

“Is that how Germany makes war?” I asked 
the German soldier. 

^^Franc-tireur/' said he, “they had fired on 
the troops” — the usual reply — and I failed 
ever to learn of one established case! I told 
him I had visited the place; that the house 
was quite detached from the village, standing 
alone in a field by the road along which the 
troops passed ; that only the family was in the 
house; and it wasn’t likely the three, five or 
sixteen-year-old girl, or the twelve-year-old 
lad or the mother, however great their courage 
or bitter their hate, would fire into a force of 
the enemy passing before their very door not 
fifty yards away. 

“They were enemies,” was his answer. 

Then I told him of a man of sixty who, at 
the little village of Ethe, had been dragged, 
with others equally innocent, before the Ger- 
mans, stood up against a wall and mowed 
down by a machine gun, thus to facilitate the 
general execution — the officers being evident- 
ly in a hurry to move on. That the man, shot 
through the lung only, had dropped under his 


The Boche Delusion 


ss 


dead fellows, left where they had fallen, after 
the wounded in sight — according to watching 
and horror-stricken witnesses from overlook- 
ing windows — had been despatched with re- 
volvers; that he, luckily overlooked, had 
crawled away in the night. The soldier lis- 
tened without interruption, with no show of 
impatience or feeling at its message, until the 
end — when he said, “They had fired on our 
troops — they were enemies.” 

I explained it had been proved by official 
investigation that these men were on the lower 
hillside of the street through which the troops 
passed, at the time they passed, and that it was 
therefore a physical impossibility for them to 
have fired on the German troops. 

“What kind of warfare is that?” I asked. 

“English lies,” he chanted. 

I assured him that I myself had talked with 
this particular man, had verified what he told 
me from others on the ground, after months of 
discreet, diligent search — for in Belgium, 
honey-combed with German spies, the people 
are very wary and one must know them long 
and be known to them well before they will 
talk, and then only briefly, under conditions 
and surroundings absolutely safe. 


56 


'Gott Mit Uns^^ 


“They were enemies,” he repeated over and 
again to whatever else I said in corroboration 
of the story. 

Again, I told a be-whiskered and mild-look- 
ing landstrum sentry of a Belgian over seventy 
years of age — beloved counselor of his neigh- 
bors in the country ’round — ^who, to my per- 
sonal knowledge, had been seized while walk- 
ing the road with his seventeen-year-old 
daughter, marched foodless throughout the 
region for three days, tied to a wagon end 
when his steps faltered, struck in the face to 
hasten him until his nose was broken, and 
finally shot at command of the German officer 
in charge of the company and left on the way- 
side to be buried by horrified peasants. 

“Is such the work for soldiers?” I asked. 

“He was an enemy,” replied the land- 
strumer. 

Once only, during my year among the Ger- 
mans, did an officer or a soldier express to me 
or in my hearing disapproval of the barbar- 
ous conduct of their soldiers, and then it was 
an officer just returned from Serbia who spoke 
of the cruelty and pillage to which the Serb- 
ians had been subjected “by the Bulgarians 
and the Austrians !” 


The Boche Delusion 


57 


Nor was such fiendish conduct by the sol- 
diers the ^inspiration of officers” alone, as 
sometimes charged — or the work only of 
brutal soldiers “got out of hand,” as was 
“explained” to me on several occasions by offi- 
cers. The incriminating diaries taken from 
dead or captured German soldiers amply re- 
veal their own initiative in the horrible orgy; 
the instant cessation of the ravages on the out- 
cry of the neutral world proves that the sol- 
diers were still responsive to the stern German 
discipline. 

At another time to another soldier I told of 
an oldish man who had gone to a nearby 
neighbor’s house to cheer the wife whose hus- 
band was away with the Belgian army. While 
he sat with the baby on his knee, talking to the 
woman in her kitchen, there came a hammer- 
ing on the front door by German soldiers. 
Bareheaded, carrying the baby on his arm, he 
went out the side door to learn what was 
wished, and as he turned the corner of the 
house a soldier without a word drove his bay- 
onet through the man’s stomach. The watch- 
ing, terrified woman saw the butchery and I 
heard it in the house to which she fled. 

“Is that war?” I asked. 


58 


'‘Gott Mit Uns" 


“English lies,” replied the soldier. 

The authentic list of boche crimes is long 
and horrific, but the boche answer is always 
the same. “English lies,” always “English 
lies”; “they fired on our troops”; “they are 
enemies.” It is the invariable explanation 
of all atrocities, from the looting and the 
burning of houses to the butchery of women, 
old men and babies. 

^^Gott Mit Uns/' 

I make no attempt here to recite or discuss 
the atrocities of the Germans in Belgium, 
France or Poland. I seek only to give the 
boche at first hand, to convey his right-of- 
might viewpoint, his designs upon America — 
to carry the message of one who has lived with 
and studied him in his own country, in the 
lands of his (one-time) commercial conquest, 
and in the lands under his heel. 

We shall see another and a violent German 
peace propaganda this winter, for the boche 
seeks desperately to escape the military defeat 
he begins to realize as inevitable. Since they 
cannot work their cruel, autocratic will they 
cry peace, that they may “do it” the “next 
time” — as my German officer confessed. But 
there can be no peace until German milita- 


The Boche Delusion 


59 


rism is crushed — and the Kaiser has relin- 
quished his mad Pan-Germanic dream. No 
peace that is not a just peace, that it may be 
also a permanent peace and so save the world 
from becoming the armed camp it would were 
Germany’s might now to prevail or the war 
end weakly in compromise. 

For the Kaiser is mad — his people hypno- 
tized. They cannot be persuaded ; they must be 
beaten into submission to the will of the demo- 
cratic world and to the faith of all the peoples. 
Beaten because they have outraged all moral 
obligations and made of the world a bloody 
battlefield to satisfy their lust for dominion in 
cruel disregard of all human rights. 


6o 


^'Gott Mit Uns^ 


XI 

T his war is our war ; our fight ; the fight 
of all the free peoples of the earth. 
Germany promised us to respect the flag 
and the rights of neutrals, and she did so long 
as it suited her interest — until she had com- 
pleted her submarine fleet. 

Then she entered upon her assassin’s career 
and commanded us to put our ships in livery 
and to sail them through a German-made lane 
on the world’s highway — or get off the sea. 
And we endured until, as Secretary of Interior 
Lane said, ^‘our good faith was construed as 
cowardice.” 

We held to the hated (official) attitude of 
neutrality while Belgium was ravished and 
Serbia desolated and our women and children 
sent to the bottom of the sea; until, after re- 
peated attacks by Germany upon the lives, the 
liberties and the properties of our citizens, 
there was left only for us either to raise the 
yellow flag or the Stars and Stripes. 

And then, thank God, Old Glory floated 
from the National masthead! 

Think you wc are out “fighting the battles 


The Boche Delusion 6l 

of other nations’’? When Belgium was vio- 
lated, then, too, were violated the principles 
upon which this Republic of ours was 
founded, which have given us peace and hap- 
piness and prosperity and a leading place 
among the nations of the world. 

When Germany registered her contempt for 
treaties and national honor by crossing the 
Belgian frontier, she began at the same time 
her invasion of America through intriguing 
officials at Washington and the conspiracies 
of her paid agents over our land. 

We are fighting not to remake the map of 
Europe, but because Germany denied our free 
right to the open sea highway and murdered 
our men and women and children exercising 
that right; because Germany conspired within 
and without our borders to complete our dis- 
sension and to menace our territory. 

She simulated friendliness for us, and all 
the time was filling our country with spies. 
She protested only honorable intentions, and 
all the time was plotting our disunion. She 
declared she wished only for peace with us, 
and all the time her Foreign Minister was try- 
ing from Berlin to induce Japan and Mexico 
to join her in making war on us. 


"Gott Mit Uns'' 


62 

Germany must be defeated because she lit- 
erally forced this destroying war with murder 
and rapine and pillage and slaughter of inno- 
cent life and destruction of world art, to sat- 
isfy the ambitions of her military leaders. 
Germany must be defeated because her every 
policy, her every deed is in defiance of inter- 
national and humane law ; because she threat- 
ens to enslave all that makes life worth living; 
because of the cowardly assault on a small, 
guiltless nation; the deliberate slaughter of 
innocent non-combatant men, women and chil- 
dren; the raping of Belgian and French and 
Serbian women; the deportation and brutal 
treatment of Belgian men; the bombing of 
unfortified towns, of hospitals afloat and 
ashore; the murder of innocent hostages for 
‘‘military necessity” ; the sinking of unarmed 
passenger ships; the poisoning of wells; the 
ruthlessness in Belgium, Serbia, Poland. 

Germany must be defeated because we must 
demolish the thing Germany stands for — the 
right of might; because the world must learn 
that treaties are not “scraps of paper,” or na- 
tional honor a mere form of speech, or a given 
word the cloak for mendacity. 

The boche pestilence must be eradicated. 


The Boche Delusion 63 

We, the Allies, must win this war, else we, 
America — “next” on the Kaiser programme, 
as I have sought to show — are destined to feel 
the full force of German might and Hun 
wrath. 

And we can’t win unless every man and 
woman of us does his or her share, and does it 
now, fighting the foe in front, stopping the 
mouth of disloyalty at home, conserving our 
food, saving our money; denying ouselves in 
order to help our soldiers fight our fight vic- 
toriously. 





